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Discussion on: Dev Is Not Construction. It's Medicine.

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bytebodger profile image
Adam Nathaniel Davis

Excellent points! And I love that you bring up the term Computer Science. I always thought that term was a bit "lofty" for what we do (unless you're, like, developing the next generation of quantum computers). But now I think I should embrace it more. Because science isn't about having all the answers. It's about following a rigorous process in an attempt to find those answers.

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Patrick Kelly

Exactly. I had a hypothesis on how I could design a good parsing framework that solved the problems I laid out. I set up falsifiable and reproducible experiments (both benchmarks and UX tests) with a null hypothesis. The times I was right, I went forward with that approach. The times I was wrong, I rewrote that component with a new hypothesis.

Ironically, science tends to be more about finding all the wrong answers. We know a lot more about how things don't work than do. Less glamorous way to put it though.